


Together, But Not Together-Together

by luoup (ravenic)



Category: RWBY
Genre: Friendship, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:56:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenic/pseuds/luoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone always thinks that Nora and Ren are dating, and Nora is fed up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together, But Not Together-Together

**Author's Note:**

> this is kind of a ventfic because wow nora I feel ya. apparently the entire planet is convinced that a boy and a girl can’t be “just friends” and i am Tired Of It.
> 
> platonic ren&nora is my absolute biggest rwby brotp and i love it and there is not enough of it so here i am trying to fix that problem.

“You’re so cute together.”

Nora wasn’t even sure who said it. Yang? Weiss? Pyrrha (she should have known better, being in Nora and Ren’s team, but at this point Nora had almost given up)? Someone walking past?

It didn’t matter who had said it. All that mattered was that someone had said it for the uncountable-eth time, and Nora was fed up.

_“We’re not together!”_

Before she knew it, she was standing up, her chair knocked back, almost shouting. Team RWBY and Team JNPR stared at her, and the rest of the dining hall was staring too, but she didn’t care. She was so sick and tired and fed up with people thinking that she was in love with Ren.

“I’m not in love with him. Why don’t people get that? I don’t love him. I. Do. Not. Love. Lie. Ren.

“Except that’s not true. I do love him. But that’s the problem. I _do_ love him. But I’m not in love with him. I love him, more than anything in the world. Even more than pancakes. Even more than sloths. But I’m not in love with him.

“But everyone seems to think that I’m always lying about it – like I would hide something so important as love. Everyone thinks that I’m in love with him, or that we’re in a secret relationship, or something. But I’m not. But somehow, just because we’re together, everyone thinks that we’re together-together – even though they’re wrong – no matter how many times I tell them.

“And we _are_ together. We’ve been together forever, and we’ll be together forever. But we’re not _together-together._

“But that’s wrong. It hurts, to say that we aren’t together. It _hurts._ Because we are. I love him. But I don’t want to kiss him. And somehow, that makes us less. Somehow, people seem to think that if I kissed Ren, then we would be closer somehow. More. Better. Like it would be a step up from what we have now.

“That isn’t true. There is nothing more than what we have now. We are as good as we get. We’re together. But we’re not together-together. Even if everyone says that we are. Everyone seems to think that the closest you can be to someone is if you are in love with them, but they’re wrong. Why does everyone think that ‘together’ equals ‘together-together?’

“Ren and I couldn’t get any closer. But people think that we’re dating – like that’s the next step after friendship – and then I have to say that we aren’t, and it makes me feel like less. It makes me feel like _we_ are less. As if to be the best we can be, Ren and I have to start dating. I don’t want to date him. But everyone seems to think that either we are dating, or we should start dating.

“Why can’t anyone see that this is perfect the way it is? Why can’t anyone see that _together_ is just as good as _together-together_ , and that neither one is better than the other? I love Ren, with all my heart. But I’m not in love with him. And what we have is no less because of that. We are together. Period.”

The dining hall was dead silent. Team RWBY and Team JNPR were quiet, and looked just a little bit shocked. Jaune’s mouth was hanging open a little, Ruby’s too. Yang’s eyes were wide, Pyrrha looked a bit like someone had hit her in the head with a frying pan, Weiss was very pale, and Blake was staring hard at the table.

Nora’s face burned. She hadn’t meant to go on a rant right in the middle of dinner. She usually put up with it, all the coos and whispers and whistles and comments and questions, but she had finally given up and yelled at everyone.

She knew what was coming. _“Oh Nora, you’re just in denial.” “Oh Nora, I’m sure he loves you too.” “Oh Nora, don’t worry, it’s normal to develop feelings for someone you’ve been together with for so long.” “Oh Nora, you don’t have to keep it a secret.”_

Well, it sure wasn’t a secret any more. Nora had just shouted at half the dining hall that she loved Lie Ren but was not in love with him, but she knew what they would all have heard. Every single person in the room was now going to be even more convinced that she was in love with him, because nobody in the entire universe seemed to be able to grasp the concept of loving someone in a non-romantic way.

She couldn’t look at Ren. Nora knew how much he didn’t like the spotlight, how much he hated getting too much attention. It was one of the reasons she was so loud and bold, to draw the staring eyes and whispering mouths away from him and back to her, like moths to fire. She liked the heat. He felt better in the darkness. It was just another of the many, many ways that they worked together, that they fit so well together, like the most perfect of puzzle pieces.

And now she had just made a huge commotion, which was not uncommon – but having it be about him _was_ uncommon. She knew how much he didn’t like people noticing him, and she had just turned the entire dining hall’s focus onto the two of them.

Nora Valkyrie was rarely one to flee any kind of situation, but this was just one of those times. And so she ran. She blocked out the stares, the whispers, the buzz she could hear rising through the room.

As she ran, she only felt worse. She had left Ren there, alone in the stares and mutters, left him alone to take the fallout of her outburst. Left him to answer the questions and the jibes and the disbelieving laughter, when she knew how much he hated talking to people when he didn’t want to talk, when she knew how uncomfortable too much attention made him. There was a reason that he was the shadow and she was the flame, and she had just left her shadow behind with no fire to protect him.

Some friend she was. _Well, maybe that would show them,_ she thought miserably as she ran. _Surely, Nora Valkyrie would never leave behind her – her “lover boy,” her “boy toy,” her “boyfriend,” right? Maybe that will prove that we’re not dating. Maybe all I have to do is abandon him, and then people will leave us alone._

 _Not that that would solve anything._ Nora hadn’t been lying when she had gone on her dining-hall rant. She did love Ren. Even more than she loved sloths – and anyone who talked to the Valkyrie for more than five minutes knew how much Nora loved sloths. She could never leave Ren. They were bonded in a way that nobody else understood, since apparently nobody could ever believe that two people could love each other without being in love with each other.

And obviously, she had just left him behind in a way that she had said she never would, so where did that leave her? Where did that leave him?

Nora adored Ren, but she was so tired of people thinking that they were “together-together.” And after the scene she had just made, maybe she had solved their problem, because maybe now Ren wouldn’t want to be with her in any way, together or together-together, at all.

Nora fought off tears and ran faster.

* * *

Lie Ren ignored the stares coming from all around him. He needed to find Nora, so no one else mattered.

Nobody said anything as he stood and left, although he could feel Jaune and Pyrrha watching him. If they had been alone, the two might have talked to him, and he might have explained some things to them, but he had hardly ever seen Nora so upset in all the years he had known her. He had to find her.

Ren knew Nora as well as he knew himself, maybe even better, so it was easy to figure out where she had gone.

Kneeling beside their shared bed, Ren pulled some of the blankets up, letting a bit of light underneath the bed and revealing a very distraught-looking Nora.

They made eye contact, and then Nora looked away. “Go ’way,” she mumbled, scooting further under the bed.

Ren said nothing. Instead, he slid beneath the bed beside her. He didn’t touch her, knowing that she was still upset, but he knew that when she was like this she didn’t like to be alone. It got too loud in her head, she said. His being there always helped to quiet her.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. They had never needed words to communicate. She always knew what he was thinking even if he didn’t speak a word, and he always knew what she meant within the torrent of words pouring out of her at any given time.

A few moments of silence, and Nora began to talk. At first, it was all apologies – sorry for shouting, sorry for making a scene, sorry for leaving him all alone. Then explanations, almost in the form of more apologies. She was just so tired of people not taking their relationship seriously, of always assuming that they either were dating or should be. She didn’t like saying that they weren’t together, because they were, even if it wasn’t the way people thought, but it felt so weird to hear people talking about them dating that she felt like she had to defend herself, and him, and what they had.

It hurt so much, she said. It hurt that people didn’t take them seriously, that they didn’t listen. It hurt that people wanted them to change, or that they thought that they were lying all the time. It hurt.

Ren let her pour out her emotions, let her whisper her thoughts to him in the quiet, dark space beneath their bed. He would always listen. And when she finally ran out of words, when at last she took a breath and no words came after, he spoke.

“Not everyone understands it. It’s easy for people to assume romance in a close relationship. I don’t know why. That’s how it is, for most people. One is the other; they’re inextricable.

“Jaune and Pyrrha and Team RWBY are our friends. Maybe they do get it, or maybe they will someday. Maybe they won’t ever really understand, but they care about us.”  
“And when have you ever cared what people thought? It doesn’t matter what they say, we aren’t them. We are together. You are always with me, and I will never leave you. We don’t need romance. We’re perfect the way we are.

“It doesn’t matter what anyone else says. They don’t get it. We are together. That’s all that’s important. Maybe people understand it, maybe they don’t. Who cares. We do. We’re together, no matter what people say or think or do.”

He reached out and touched her cheek in the near-dark, letting her look up and meet his rose-colored eyes with her only-slightly-teary teal ones. “Team Sloth.”

Her return smile was weak and watery, but it was there. “Team Sloth,” she whispered back.

And then, predictable as clockwork, she reached up and gently poked his nose. “Boop.”

_Boop._

Maybe nobody would ever truly understand what it was exactly that they shared, the bond between them. So what. Ren and Nora understood what they had. They had each other, no matter what, and that was all that really mattered in the end.

Team Sloth indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> i just really, really love platonic renora, okay? it's one of those pairings that i do not like romantically at all. if you ship it that way, that's okay, but i just can't see it as anything other than some perfect platonic soulmates/siblings-by-choice/just so very platonic and good and aaaaagh i can't even do words for how i feel about this. i just love them a lot and i really hope that their relationship remains platonic and wonderful.  
> this entire fic was mostly just me venting about how i feel when people think that i'm dating/that i have romantic feelings for my friends. most of the time i'm just amused at the ridiculousness, but sometimes it really bugs me. i have yet to actually have to shout at someone, but i feel like nora would eventually reach that point.  
> apologies for all this ranting, but i have been wanting to write this since i first saw rwby like two years ago. long story short, i love ren and nora but i really don't like it romantically so here i am writing how i would feel if i was nora because i have been in similar situations.  
> they are together, just not together-together. and i love that a lot.


End file.
